ain't no fairy tale
by edmelon
Summary: Prompt-inspired flat-sharing shenanigans. Gray, Natsu & Gajeel are forced into a tiny apartment together and madness ensues. it ain't gonna be a walk in the park — and certainly it ain't no fairy tale either, that's for sure. bro!fic. modern au
1. pink lemonade

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1 — _pink lemonad_ e

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 _A/N_ : Because I've got an entire document full of writing prompts I've never used and half of them seem to fit into this verse I've been wanting to write. So… yay? And who doesn't love a good bro!fic?

Feedback and suggestions appreciated!

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 _Prompt_ 1: Choosing to repaint the apartment and goes to the hardware store together to pick out color swatches.

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 _Prompt_ 2: 'After I nearly burnt down my house, my garage, and most of the trees in a five-mile radius, I mostly stopped trying to light fires.'

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"I'm tellin' ya, ya halfwit, we ain't havin' _pink."_

"And why the hell _not?"_

"Because it's enough that I gotta look at _your_ ugly mug day in an day out — I ain't havin' my place look like some girly shit—"

" _Our_ place—"

" _Who paid half our deposit, Dragneel?"_

" _Hell if I know how much ya paid — we split it threeways!"_

"I swear damn, Dragneel, if you don't put a sock in it _this instant—"_

"Oh, for the love of God you two, _shut the hell up!"_

Natsu and Gajeel abruptly paused mid-stride, the trolley squeaking to a shrill halt as they blinked dumbly up at Gray who was stood examining Natsu's suggested shade of pink. It was somewhere between 'sorbet' and 'strawberry mousse'. Or some shit like that anyway. Whatever the hell it was, all Gray saw was pink and promptly decided that it was ugly as fuck. He sighed, heavily setting the can of paint back down on the display and glaring at the two idiots beside him.

"Honest to shit, you two had better shut the fuck up or so help me God I will do nasty things to your face whilst you sleep."

Natsu wrinkled his nose. " _Dude_ ,"

"If ya were looking to give me a reason to question yer sexuality, stripper," Gajeel said, "then that was it. Bad enough I gotta live with a known exhibitionist..." He trailed off, visibly shuddering.

Gray scowled. "I'm just sayin', there's a lotta paint about here. I got the tools to get creative."

Natsu let out a stifled sort of cackle, probably imagining all the very creative and serious artistic work he could do to his soon-to-be flatmates' sleeping faces over the coming months. Everyone knew full well that he kept a stash of permanent markers handy beneath his bed at all times should such an occasion arise. They tried not to think about it. Gray made a mental note to have a few locks put on his bedroom door before they moved in.

Grumbling, Gajeel said nothing and merely continued on, leaning heavily on the trolley as they ambled down the next aisle of the massive hardware store. There was a tense silence as they found themselves surrounded by, yes, of course, more fucking paint. As if they hadn't seen enough of the sodding stuff in the last half hour.

 _And still they hadn't settled on a fucking shade yet._

Gray rifled a handful of colour swatches about in front of his face and pretended to be deeply interested in a selection of blues. Gajeel glowered at him.

"Perhaps ya should get one of them fer ya bedroom," he suggested coldly. "Match yer fuckin' blue balls."

Gray waved a hand dumbly, appalled by the injustice of the statement. He stammered uselessly for a solid minute or so.

" _The fuck have I done to piss you off?"_

Natsu looked positively delighted. "Oh wait, hold up, I got a long-ass list for this very moment!"

"Shut up, moron!" Gray snapped before whirling back at Gajeel. "If this is about sharing the damned apartment still, you remember it ain't _my_ fault you got kicked outta the dorms!"

Gajeel slammed a fist down onto the side of the trolley and effectively scared away every customer in the near vicinity.

" _I beat the shit outta ONE asswipe and suddenly I'm a danger to society? What the fuck sorta world are we livin' in?"_

"Now he _was_ in hospital for a good month after you were through with him," Natsu added in, rubbing his chin and grinning rather too inappropriately for the subject as he remembered that oh-so epic punch-up. "Nice job, by the way,"

"Cheers, pinky,"

Gray shook his head. If he was honest, he was still just a _little_ pissed off that he had been out of town the day of that fateful brawl.

"What did the guy even do?" He asked. Anything that warranted such blunt-force trauma from the Iron Fist had to have been either a very bold or very stupid move. From what he'd heard, Bora (or whatever his name was) was still on crutches.

Something glinted in Gajeel's eyes. Gray almost regretted asking.

"Ya mess with Juvia, ya messin' with me," — and he leaned in so close that Gray could practically _feel_ the murderous aura burning from his very being — "ya _hear that_ , stripper?"

He felt a chill sweep up his spine. To the side, Natsu snickered, apparently unfazed,

"Thought his balls were too _blue_ for that."

But Gray's mind was already running wild faced with the prospect of Gajeel's stone-cold, merciless wrath... Oh God and he was going to be _living_ with this guy—

" _Why the fuck did I agree to this?"_ he cried, apparently unable to take it anymore and making to dramatically tear off his jacket, but Gajeel's iron grip settled itself on his shoulder before any impromptu stripping could occur. He stopped dead in the middle of the aisle, twisting the trolley sideways to block the walkway and forcibly bringing the other two to a stop with him.

" _That's it!"_ Gajeel stood up straight, folding his arms in what he hoped was the ultimate 'tough guy', muscle man image. "Listen here, ya _dicks!_ I ain't sure what sorta shit I've done in life to deserve this crap, but the fact is we've gotta live together for an entire _god-forsaken,_ _pissin' year,_ so we're layin' out some ground rules!"

Natsu and Gray both nodded. Dumb as fuck they may have been, but even they had to admit that if this was going to work in _any_ way whatsoever, then perhaps a few Golden Rules were in order.

Not to mention that Gajeel would probably throttle them if they didn't agree.

" _One—"_ Gajeel said, glaring at Gray pointedly, " _No strippin'!"_

Even Natsu cast Gray a burning look and he looked away uncomfortably. Gajeel deemed this satisfactory. He went on.

"Two — no one touches anyone's fuckin' food! I'm lookin' at you, Dragneel! If I find any of the two of yer dirty mitts on my culinary masterpieces I'll kick ya face in so hard you'll have to settle for a straw. We have a _labelling_ system, people!"

Again, the two of them nodded. It was an unspoken rule, after all — food ownership was the strictest ownership.

" _Three—"_ Gajeel grit his teeth. His tone became deadly low. A shadow fell across his face, piercings glinting ominously in the intrusively bright store lighting. " _No_ fuckin' leaving Salamander alone with the stove!"

At this, Gray nodded so fiercely that he pulled a muscle in his neck. Natsu balked, indignant.

" _What?_ Why the fuck not!"

Gajeel stared back, deadpanned. Apparently too taken by the stupidity of this comment, he was silent for a good few seconds.

"Remind me why the fuck you're even here in the first place, _idiot."_

Natsu opened his mouth. Then closed it again. After a moment of reflection, he muttered something unintelligible and sank back into the background, his 'sorbet to strawberry mousse' hair blending in disgustingly well with the cans on the shelves behind them. Gajeel's point was effectively made.

"Yeah, _exactly,_ so, I repeat: this moron is _not_ allowed to be left alone in our kitchen without explicit permission, agreed?"

Natsu grumbled, but didn't protest. Gajeel looked incredibly smug. If there was one thing he would cherish holding above Natsu's head for all time it was the infamous 'stove incident'.

The only downside to this was, of course, that it was said stove incident that had wound up with Natsu being evicted and in need of a new place to live in the first place. So here they were at the crack of dawn in the damned hardware store arguing about what colour to paint their new lounge.

"How did you even _manage_ that?" Gray spoke up, apparently mirroring Gajeel's train of thought. "I mean, don't ovens have safety settings and shit?"

"Yeah, well— _shut up."_

"Jus sayin', flamebrain,"

"Ice _dick."_

"Does everything you touch burst into flames, or—?"

" _Shut the fuck up, Gray!"_ Natsu almost tore his colour swatches in half. "I won't be lightin' any more fires, _okay?_ I've mostly stopped trying,"

" _Mostly?"_

" _Yes, mostly!"_ Natsu snarled at Gray, huffing and averting his gaze towards the surrounding rows upon rows of paint cans. "That good enough for ya, Princess? I ain't burning our apartment down. There. Done. Now what the fuck kinda colour are we gettin' here, anyway?"

The other two fell uneasily silent. Faced with perhaps every shade of every colour under the goddamned sun, they perhaps wondered if they should have brought one of their female friends along. Personally, none of them could even tell the slightest difference between colour tones anyway, but at least Lucy or Levy or someone would've been around to kick their sorry asses into gear.

They came to a stop aside a stand of paint cans with no less than _twenty_ rows of truly riveting grey tones labelled all the way from 'coastal grey' to 'battleship grey' to 'steel grey's 5, 6 _and_ 7\. Absolutely sick to shit of this poncey paint job nonsense (not to mention that he was contemplating taking this entire building apart brick by brick out of frustration if he didn't escape these two idiots soon), Gajeel, fully armed with the stores entire selection of colour swatches, spread them out on the inside of the trolley and set about ending this dilemma like the alpha male he was.

(Or at least hoped to be.)

And _no_ alpha male was gonna have a girly, pink-ass lounge.

"Aight," he said in a tone that clearly showed he was full of serious stuff; "get ya panties back in order and shut the fuck up — _I'm_ sayin' we're goin' for 'camo green 3' and y'all ain't fuckin' stoppin' me. _Dragneel,_ go get the greens and quit mopin' like a drama queen. _Stripper,_ get out the dough." He paused, regarding Gray with narrowed eyes as he watched the man fumble about for his wallet. "And _find a damn shirt!"_

Gray took the briefest of glances down at his bare chest before shrugging lightly.

"Huh. When'd that happen?"

Gajeel's palm hit his face so hard it would probably bruise. Forget picking out a fucking paint job for their crappy new hellhole of a home (leaky plumbing and dodgy electrics and all), these idiots would kill him before the bloody apartment would.

And, as if to prove his point, Natsu (for some reason insisting on being more of a little bitch than usual today) just _had_ to choose that precise moment to open his mouth and whine—

"Why _can't_ it be pink?"

" _Because I ain't havin' a sittin' room lookin' like a fuckin' fairy princess land! This ain't no fairy tale, ya dumbass!"_

" _Hey!_ It will be the fiercest, fieriest goddamned pink you've ever seen!"

""It will be _camo green_ and it will be manly as fuck—"

" _Ever_ wears green," Natsu countered, shoving the trolley aside and oh-so-narrowly avoiding the looming display of greys.

"Yeah, and she's still manlier than you, shit-for-brains!"

" _Fuck that! You wanna go—?"_

" _BRING IT ON YA FLAMING PYROMANIAC!"_

Natsu's first move was to barrel his way head-first into Gajeel's stomach, sending the two of them flying into the nearest display shelf.

And so, many shades of grey were spilt that day.

Meanwhile, Gray was too busy tearing his hair out to notice that not only his shirt, but his pants had too gone missing in the confusion.

And so contributed to their lifelong ban from the hardware store.

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	2. a certain shade of green

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2 — _a certain shade of green_

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A/N: Holy shit I might be back?

Idk. I don't have time to rewrite this chapter. Have the old version I guess?

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 _Prompt_ 1: 'Even duct tape can't fix stupid, but it can muffle it!' 'Get that duct tape away from my face!'

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Gray had no idea how they'd even gotten this far. Really, he had absolutely no clue how they'd even made it back to the apartment in one piece what with Gajeel's erratic mood swings and all.

Though in truth Gajeel was probably right to be pissed off. Between the three of them they had a pretty impressive list of 'no-go zones' — (read: places they'd descended upon under the influence of copious amounts of alcohol and had subsequently been barred from) — but being thrown out of the hardware store at not even 8 a.m. on a Monday morning was a low point. It probably would have been hilarious had they not been stone-cold sober.

But it just would've been easier for everyone involved if he _didn't_ have to behave like a little bitch about it!

(And blaming Natsu for the entire ordeal probably hadn't helped.)

Though, in Gajeel's defence, neither had Natsu's resolve to flinging paint cans at him in retaliation, but by that point Gray's patience had hit its absolute limit. Really, if they were going to fight it would have been _nice_ if they'd waited until they'd gotten _out_ of the fucking car to do it! Gray had nearly run down three old ladies, five mailboxes and at least _one_ slow-witted jogger on the way home trying to break them up _and_ keep his eyes on the road at the same time.

All in all it had been utterly futile and utterly disastrous, but, hey, at least they wouldn't be short of paint for a while.

Speaking of which—

 _"Alright! Which one of you dumbasses drew fuckin' DICKS all over my walls!"_

Gray let out the most long-winded sigh in existence as Gajeel stormed in from the hallway, flecked in varying shades of his beloved camo green and glared at the two other idiots in the room with such intensity that it was a wonder he didn't combust.

"Not it!" Natsu chirped and ducked behind the tower of paint cans stacked on the kitchen table. Currently the living space of their apartment was stripped bare of all other furniture, empty all in prep for the 'Grand Paint Job'. All in all, it offered Natsu very little places to hide.

He'd be dead by the end of the day.

"Like _shit, Salamander!"_ Gajeel bellowed. "I leave you two morons alone for _one_ goddamned minute—!"

 _"Hey!"_ Gray piped up, appalled. "Who're you calling a moron, ya _moron_ — _Natsu's_ the one throwing dicks about the place!"

Natsu scoffed. "Say that again once you've gotten dressed, ya exhibitionist! I'm completely innocent — you can't prove anything!"

Gajeel balked. _"YER DRAWING ANOTHER ONE RIGHT NOW!"_

Natsu blinked once, twice, and then a third time as his eyes fell upon the masterpiece he was idly tracing across the tablecloth. Green balls and all, he snickered.

"Cut the crap, dickbag," Gray glowered at him, throwing an abandoned paintbrush his way. "I didn't spend half my pay on paint and get thrown out of the fuckin' store this morning to watch you _defile_ our living room."

 _"Three hours it took me to paint that bedroom!"_ Gajeel added in furiously. _"THREE_ stinkin' _hours_ just to get the _best_ fuckin' optimum level of coverage for the consistency of paint oils — to blend the exact, _glorious_ shade for the natural light of the room—"

Upon seeing Natsu and Gray staring at him blankly, he stopped and growled.

"Whatever, shut up, the point is _this_ little shit gone an' fucked up my handiwork _and I'm gonna have yer balls for that, Dragneel!"_

Gajeel lunged, narrowly avoiding the stack of cans on the table. Gray's heart faltered, his pulse racing as he leapt over to steady a tub of paint that was wobbling precariously off the corner.

 _"Watch where the fuck you're going!"_

Neither of them were listening. Gray scowled. In front of him, Natsu and Gajeel were circling the table like boxers before a match.

 _"C'mere, Dragneel!"_

 _"Make_ me, _bitch."_

Gajeel's growl was resounding. Natsu smirked.

Gajeel grabbed the side of the table and made to lift it above his head—

 _"Put it down, idiot!"_

Gray would deny unto his dying day that he uttered so much as a shriek upon seeing his roommate attempt to chuck their furniture across the room, but, alas, he caught Natsu snickering. He tried to fight that hint of pink from rising to his cheeks.

Perhaps quite luckily though, the other moron hadn't noticed;

 _"That's it!"_ Gajeel hollered, red in the face. _"I've had it with this shit! Gimme that duct tape!"_

Natsu paled, his voice peaking shrilly;

 _"You what?!"_

His cries went ignored. Still occupied by their little game about the table, Gajeel was holding out his hand expectantly, his ears steaming. Gray shook his head.

"Like hell that's gonna do anything," he sighed, but his gaze drifted to the wad of tape abandoned on the kitchen side. "Even duct tape can't fix stupid."

Gajeel snatched the tape up before either of them could even blink. "Nah, _but it can muffle it!"_

And the table between them went flying.

 _"HEY!"_

 _"Hold still ya half-wit!"_

 _"GAJEEL, YOU ASSHOLE!"_

 _"GRAY! Grab his legs!"_

 _"Get that duct tape away from my face!"_

 _"OUCH_ —!" Gray glowered, waving his hand before his face. A little line of pink puncture-marks were just beginning to blossom against his skin. "Careful, he's rabid!"

 _"A-HA!"_ Gajeel cried out finally in triumph, dropping Natsu's limp form to the floor with a resounding 'thump!' and standing proudly over his fallen victim. "There! What d'ya hafta say about _that_ , Dragneel?"

On the floor, Natsu made some indignant muffle in response, but nothing more. His mouth thoroughly taped over, his hands and ankles bound tight, they watched him squirm like an angry fish out of water at their feet. Gray nudged him with his toe, watching with mild interest.

"Ya just gonna leave him here?"

Gajeel made some sort of snort in response.

"I ain't watchin' his ugly mug all day."

And he proceeded, with all the skill and poise of a master magician, to sweep the entire protective cloth from the surface of the table without so much as _wobbling_ a single can of paint upon it's surface…

And so Natsu spent the majority of that day taped to the floor, covered from head-to-toe beneath a paint-stained tablecloth, silently plotting a vengeance most merciless.

(Which would be why Gajeel woke up the following morning taped to his bed with several dicks on his forehead.)

(Natsu blamed Gray—)

 _"NATSUUU—!"_

(—and ended up mummified and stuffed in the cupboard for his troubles.)

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